This year’s UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall) commencement ceremony will be the site of an anti-torture protest initiated by the national organization World Can’t Wait and other anti-torture organizations, lawyers, and activists.
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Protesters ended a 10-day hunger strike yesterday on the University of California at Berkeley campus during a meeting with the university chancellor and top administrators that both sides called productive.
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From "Hungry For Justice" site, posted May 12, dated May 13 (Thursday)

Wednesday May 12, 2010 - 09:18:00 PM

On March 3rd, 2010, over 20 students, the majority being Latinos, decided to go on a hunger strike to call attention issues that affect our community both here on campus and across the nation. This inspired many students, workers, and community members, evident in the solidarity, love, and support we witnessed since then. We say thank you to everyone for this.
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Hunger strikers on the campus of University of California at Berkeley are scheduled to meet this afternoon with the university chancellor to negotiate their demands and possibly end the 10-day strike, a spokesman for the group said.
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Hunger strikers at the University of California at Berkeley were still on campus as of Monday night. They marched with their supporters to the Chancellor's residence about 7 p.m. after campus police dislodged them from their previous locations. Strikers posted this video of the march on their Facebook page on Monday night.
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At its May 6, 2010 regular monthly meeting the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission grappled with landmark issues related to the new, proposed, Downtown Area Plan, continued review of renovation plans for the North Berkeley Public Library, roundly criticized the design of a proposed project adjacent to the historic Berkeley City Club, and made its first landmark designation of 2010.
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Negotiators for the city of Richmond and Chevron have reached an unprecedented agreement that settles several major tax issues. Chevron has agreed to pay millions of additional dollars to the city if the city will drop its appeal of Measure T and proposed changes in the Utility Users Tax. (See below for details.).The settlement goes to the city council next Tuesday where the Richmond Progressive Alliance expects and supports its adoption.
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The University of California at Berkeley has reached an agreement with the San Francisco Giants for Cal's football team to play their home games in 2011 at AT&T Park in San Francisco while its own stadium is being retrofitted and renovated.
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OAKLAND, CA – The BART Police Department is investigating a suspicious death in which a 22-year-old white male from Berkeley, Konstantin Tomashevsky, was found at the UN Plaza entrance of the Civic Center BART Station on May 5, 2010.
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Hunger strikers at the University of California at Berkeley tried to block the school's administration building today but people could still get inside, according to a university spokeswoman. The students held a rally today at 3:30 p.m, and then marched to the Chancellor's residence. A twitter message at about 5 pm said "Admin has contacted us: there will be a meeting only if we end up the hunger strike." Strikers posted this video of the march on their Facebook page on Monday night.
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The University of California at Berkeley has reached an agreement with the San Francisco Giants for Cal's football team to play their home games in 2011 at AT&T Park in San Francisco while its own stadium is being retrofitted and renovated.
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Negotiators for the city of Richmond and Chevron have reached an unprecedented agreement that settles several major tax issues. Chevron has agreed to pay millions of additional dollars to the city if the city will drop its appeal of Measure T and proposed changes in the Utility Users Tax. (See below for details.).The settlement goes to the city council next Tuesday where the Richmond Progressive Alliance expects and supports its adoption.
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OAKLAND, CA – The BART Police Department is investigating a suspicious death in which a 22-year-old white male from Berkeley, Konstantin Tomashevsky, was found at the UN Plaza entrance of the Civic Center BART Station on May 5, 2010.
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In a message to supporters Thursday, Rabbi Michael Lerner--whose Berkeley Hills home was recently vandalized by right-wing Zionists— urged the media to draw attention to the incident and what it means for “Americans and for American Jews.”
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In the news since the last issue: Berkeley City Council postpones new marijuana regulations, tables fine proposal for large daycares, approves a proposal for amendments to Telegraph late night zoning; Berkeley Rep plays get Tony nominations and Berkeley police ask for help on missing teen.
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Saying the University of California's sharply misguided priorities call for unprecedented and unified action, two University of California employees represented by the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 have joined students in a hunger strike at the UC Berkeley campus. Today's action comes after workers last week called on prominent graduation speakers at UC campuses statewide to refuse to deliver their commencement addresses unless workers' demands are met (see list of demands below).
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Hundreds of citizens attended the San Pablo City Council meeting Monday night 5/3/10 to voice their opposition to the reinstatement of eminent domain (ED) in their city, a provision that lapsed in March 2009. Redevelopment project areas currently cover over 90% of the city leaving most citizens in fear of losing their homes.
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Opinion

Editorials

Anyone who’s interested in the truth had better read the latest discharge from the seemingly bottomless sewer which calls itself FLAME ( “Facts and Logic About the Middle East”). Prudence would suggest that we should just ignore this garbage, but the serious accusations that the author makes which sully the good name of the Jewish community of the Bay Area can’t go unchallenged.
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Today we have an excellent reader commentary from an environmental scientist explaining, once more with feeling, why AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit boondoggle will do absolutely nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contrary to the claims of some local pols. To that can be added what’s even more pathetic: It won’t do anything to improve public transit either.
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The Editor's Back Fence

Regular readers (now more than 20,000 visitors a week, with almost 600 subscribers) will find this week’s Planet particularly confusing. We’re in a new phase of our experimental process, so please read this carefully and then bear with us during the transition. From now on, the only “issue date” will be on Tuesdays. That’s the day we have complete events lists ready to post, which will give would-be audience members ten full days of arts and events listing, starting on Wednesday and going through the next two weekends. We’ll “publish” the week’s issue that day. What this means is that when readers type in berkeleydailyplanet.com they’ll get the “current” issue, the one “published” on the most recent Tuesday. Then we’ll start adding stories to the “next” issue as they come in. Any time readers want to read these new stories, they can just click on the “next issue” button on the front page of the “current issue”. (Try it now.) To get back to square one, click on "current issue". If a story is fast breaking and changing fast(the recent student hunger strike, for example), we might also add it to the “current issue” front page, above the original headline and under the red “Extra” heading on the right hand side. As there are new developments, we’ll just add these at the top, while not removing earlier versions. A summary or final version of stories like this will then be posted in the next Tuesday issue. The Tuesday issue will also be converted to PDFs (graphic pages) which will be posted on the site . These can easily be printed on home printers and will be available in print from Copy Central at Solano and Peralta for a small charge to cover the printing costs. We’re not going to create a printable version on Fridays any more, but each printable Tuesday issue will have the whole preceding week's content, updated as needed. I’ll still be sending email updates twice a week to subscribers, with links to especially interesting stories. If you’d like a free subscription, just click on “subscribe” at the right hand side of this page. And there’s also an “unsubscribe” button there if you want it.-more-

Berkeley Police Seek Four Suspects in Connection With Recent Robberies;PG&E Apologizes for Smart Meter Problems, but Some Aren't Satisfied;;Life and Death on the Arizona Border; Open Letter to UC President Yudof Re: UC Statement on Divestment; Flashmob Invades Westin Hotel - Video Goes Viral;Watch the Youtube video that has already been seen over 100,000 times and is -more-;The Boy Scouts: A Pact With the Devil;Response to Prof. Kondolf on BRT;First Person: Lifestyles of the Mentally Ill;Ghosts of the Alaka’i; Reader's Recommendation: Anzu Restaurant ;
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Anyone who's worried about BP's seeming lock on a lot of space and people here in Berkeley had better read this :"...from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates. That's because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap."
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We hear a lot of talk about carbon dioxide as the most dangerous climate culprit. And we should. So far, loading the atmosphere with CO2 is the single biggest cause of climate disruption. But, in the final analysis, methane may prove to be the most deadly of all greenhouse gases.
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I’ve lived at the same Oakland address for 41 years. I rented for 9 years and have owned my home since 1978. I am a childless widow. I used to like where I lived. Now, I wish I could move my home out of Oakland. I have no desire to move. I just want to remove my life from the reaches of the egregious oppression of Oakland governance. Oakland has some of the highest paid city employees in the entire country. Clearly a city with this much poverty and serious needs cannot afford to compensate Oakland employees and politicians at the level they have managed to achieve and demand and still viably function and maintain needed services.
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Mother's Day really was in its origin an antiwar day, an antiwar statement. Julia Ward Howe was sickened by what had happened during the Civil War, the loss of life, the carnage, and she created Mother's Day as a call for women all over the world to come together and create ways of protesting war, of making a kind of alternate government that could finally do away with war as an acceptable way of solving conflict. Countries used to go to war just for pride over some incident because they were offended or one king made a bad remark about another king.
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Shortly before the November 2008 election, I received in the mail a glossy flyer with a picture of a polar bear, which said “We can’t afford to wait…” The flyer argued that we must implement transit projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to save the polar bear, and that we should oppose a citizen initiative (Measure KK) to require voter approval of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) along Telegraph Avenue. My interest was piqued, and I began to follow the debate about the proposal for BRT with interest. As one trained to evaluate scientific claims, I was intrigued. The scientific question (with obvious policy implications) is whether building the proposed BRT down Telegraph Avenue will result in less greenhouse gas emissions than the current situation. But who paid for this slick flyer, and what scientific basis underlay the claim that pouring concrete islands in the middle of Telegraph Avenue was likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
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Recent headlines: “Berkeley Tackles $14.6 Million Budget Deficit”. Some may recall that ten months ago Mayor Bates was featured, in color, front page-and-center, in the Berkeley Voice, saying “The Future is Rosy for Berkeley.” Now “Rosy-the-Rivet-You” sings a different Looney-Tune. What a difference a year makes!
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If we take the BP oil slick, now 23000 gallons a day (May 3, 2010), floating disaster into the gulf of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas onto Florida and then into the Atlantic Ocean as the greatest, the biggest, the primo example of how oil companies are killing the ecological resources, the breeding grounds fly-ways of birds and aquatic life; and make a connection by adding a report from the US Disease Control Agency, revealing that cigarette smoking, (still!) junk food and sedentary life are now causing obesity and diabetes thus increasing heart disease in 50 percent of the adult population (Chron., Disease Control April 27, 10: A8), then we could predict, with qualifying evidence and substantial data, based upon third party research of Government agencies and official news of the established press, that these ruinous events might well weaken the courage and resources of the US economy, the society, the military and the Empire.
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Columns

Israeli charges that Syria has transferred Scud missiles to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, coupled with a sharp criticism of the Shiite organization’s arsenal by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, have measurably increased tensions in the Middle East. According to the Israeli daily, Haaretz Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed About Gheit said the Lebanese government was in a “complete panic” over the possibility of an attack by Tel Aviv.
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I flinch every time I read a headline that includes the words Israel, Palestine, West Bank, or Gaza. Usually the articles contain horrific news: suicide bombs maiming Israeli civilians, troops dragging Palestinians off their ancestral lands, escalating anger and violence. At long last, the documentary film Budrus brings good news, a tiny ray of hope in what’s seemed to be an ocean of despair.
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Last Thursday night I came home from TERRORiSTKA[sic], a play about Chechen terrorists by Rebecca Bella at the Berkeley City Club. Before I started to write this review, I clicked on the front page of the New York Times online. The Pakistan Taliban fumbles the bomb in Times Square and in Red Square US GI’s march in the May Day Parade. The play I saw was about striking back at the Russian Empire that maltreats the Chechens; the US is killing civilians with drones in Afghanistan; now the two Empires march together. I just shook my head at this variation on George Lucas’s vision…and at the timeliness of this play.
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AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT OAKLAND The Oakland Public Library's museum is designed to discover, preserve, interpret and share the cultural and historical experiences of African Americans in California and the West. In addition, a three-panel mural is on permanent display.
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ARDENWOOD HISTORIC FARM Ardenwood farm is a working farm that dates back to the time of the Patterson Ranch, a 19th-century estate with a mansion and Victorian Gardens. Today, the farm still practices farming techniques from the 1870s. Unless otherwise noted, programs are free with regular admission.
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ARDENWOOD HISTORIC FARM Ardenwood farm is a working farm that dates back to the time of the Patterson Ranch, a 19th-century estate with a mansion and Victorian Gardens. Today, the farm still practices farming techniques from the 1870s. Unless otherwise noted, programs are free with regular admission.
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ASIAN ART MUSEUM OF SAN FRANCISCO The Asian Art Museum-Chon-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture recently unveiled its new building in San Francisco's Civic Center. The building, the former San Francisco Public Library, has been completely retrofitted and rebuilt to house San Francisco's significant collection of Asian treasures. The museum offers complimentary audio tours of the museum's collection galleries.
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Berkeley City College will host a visit by the president of the Jolom Mayaetik Mayan weavers' cooperative from San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico on Monday May 17. From noon to 2:30 in the BCC atrium, Celia Santiz Ruiz will exhibit and sell textiles created on the traditional backstrap loom by members of the 250-strong cooperative who live in small communities in the highlands of Chiapas. The collection includes traditional tapestries and huipiles as well as examples of the cooperative's new designs—pillows, scarves, kitchen towels, tablecloths. In the afternoon she will speak to a BCC class about the work of the cooperative and the daily lives of its members. The weavers of the cooperative are proudly carrying on the weaving tradition and ancient designs learned from their mothers and grandmothers and also working to extend the reach of their art by visiting communities in the US and exhibiting their work and speaking about the goals of their cooperative.
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This weekend the Berkeley Arts Festival will present the third night of John Schott's Typical Orchestra Retrospective and the India Cooke Bill Crossman Duo Audiences coming into the future home of the Judah L. Magnes Museum at 2121 Allston Way are greeted by the large figurative works of painter Bob Brokl.
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